"You're hired!" and so ends this years series of the Apprentice and as usual I'm left wondering whether Sir Alan will ever find the ultimate apprentice, someone that we'll really remember as a gifted entrepreneur.

This years series brought with it the usual crop of "talent" that made us shout at the telly, shake our heads in disbelief at the apparent incompetence of these Global Marketing Consultants, Corporate Enterprise Account Managers and Sandhurst Scholarship Winning Stockbrokers, and laugh out loud at the dry comments from Nick "I'll leave that with you" Hewer and the wonderful Margaret Mountford; "Never before in the history of car washing have so few cars been washed by so many people in such a long time". Brilliant.

We watched the candidates make simple errors which we of course we would have spotted straight away. After all we all know how expensive Sandalwood is and that there really isn't a mass market for hand-made rocking horses.....don't we? I wonder if there will ever be someone who in our eye's really cuts the mustard and proves themselves as a raw talent; a worthy apprentice. This year's finalists were hard to pick between, it's fair to say, but I was left feeling that although Yasmina was perhaps a worthy winner, maybe James would have brought a bit more character (as well as ignorance) to the boardroom table.

In any event, in the words of James "it's been brilliant" and another hugely entertaining series from which we can all take away some lessons learnt. My personal ones? I will be a tougher interviewer; I will check all references; I won't ever buy soap with honeycomb in it and Pants Man really doesn't work, on any level (sorry Philip).

And the ultimate apprentice? In my opinion look no further than Mickey Mouse in Disney's Fantasia, if you haven't ever seen it, it's a delight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuVsCRQkXvw